Entertainment

Data Portability is Boring

Data portability is a hot topic in the Web 2.0 community. I’ve previously weighed in with my opinion: data portability is not a universal right and the value a company may receive from offering it varies from company to company. Some companies have a valid business rationale for offering it while others don’t.

In an interview in early February, Tim Berners-Lee, “the father of the web,” essentially stated that Internet services which aren’t offering data portability are “boring.” He explains:

Now if you look at the social networking sites which, if you like, are traditional Web 2.0 social networking sites, they hoard this data. The business model appears to be, "We get the users to give us data and we reuse it to our benefit. We get the extra value." When one person has typed in who it is that's in a photo, then we can benefit. We give the other person extra benefit by being able to give them a list of photos that they are in. That's tremendously beneficial.

That's the power of the Semantic Web. And I think, the social networking sites, some of the ones that have become very popular have done it because captured the semantics. They haven't just allowed you to tag something with somebody's name, they've allowed you to capture the difference between somebody who took the photo and somebody who's in the photo, so that the power of the reuse of the data has been much greater.

So, first of all, are they going to let people use the data? I think, the push now, as we've seen during the last year, has been unbearable pressure from users to say, "Look, I have told you who my friends are. You are the third site I've told who my friends are. Now, I'm going to a travel site and now I'm going to a photo site and now I'm going to a t-shirt site. Hello? You guys should all know who my friends are." Or, "You should all know who my colleagues are. I shouldn't have to tell you again."

So, the users are saying, "Give me my data back. That's my data." That was one of the cries originally behind XML, it was a desktop application. Don't store it in a format which I can't reuse. So, now it's, "Give it to me using the idea of standards. If you do that, then I can do things with it."

I find Tim’s comments amusing. While I don’t necessarily disagree with his vision, the number of mainstream Internet users I know who are getting their panties in a knot over data portability is about the same number of mainstream Internet users I know who could actually tell me what “FOAF” is - close to zero.

From what I’ve seen, it’s really only a small but vocal portion of the Internet population comprised primarily of technologists and Web 2.0 kool aid sippers who are beating the drum for data portability.

The truth is that the average mainstream Internet user doesn't look at Facebook as a warehouse for data; Facebook is merely a place to socialize with friends and poke hot coeds. I’m sure users wouldn’t complain if there was an easy way to take certain data from one service to another, but by in large, I think the technologists pushing for data portability are trying to supply something that there isn’t a whole lot of demand for.

The notion that users have their data commandeered by exploitative companies and need to have it given back is particularly naïve in my opinion. I doubt that the average MySpace user, for instance, is under the impression that the data he provides to MySpace is somehow being seized from him by MySpace. Even though the user may not easily move all his data from MySpace to a competing service via a standard format, he still has his data and can provide it to any other service he wants if he’s willing invest the time and energy to do so. In other words, there’s nothing that he needs to be given back. And it’s worth noting that he was able to take advantage of MySpace at no cost so it’s not like he was forced into an unfair deal. Your relationships with services such as MySpace, like your relationships with real people, are usually a two-way street.

All this said, I think there are three key things technologists neglect when considering data portability:

(1) The average Internet user probably isn’t an active member of dozens of Web 2.0 services. While this may be difficult for some to believe, the truth is that most people don’t feel compelled to sign up for every new Web 2.0 service that launches. And quite frequently, users sign up for services that they eventually end up using very little. Data portability seems a lot less compelling when one recognizes that many, if not most, mainstream Internet users aren’t actively investing their time equally across a wide range of Web 2.0 services.

(2) The average Internet user probably doesn’t need or want to take his friends along to every Web 2.0 service he or she signs up for. These services can be fun and entertaining, but the notion that every user wants to be able to import his data when signing up for a new one is asinine.

(3) Privacy is just as important as openness. Where does my data end and yours begin? If you believe that users of Web 2.0 services have some inherent “right” to control their own data but that this data is in inexorably linked to the “social graph,” what “rights” do users have to control where “shared” data goes?

When I look at data portability, I think the name reveals what’s wrong with the concept: “data.” Yes, data is important, but the data collected by Web 2.0 services isn’t what makes those services compelling- it’s the fact that real people you have some connection to are using them too. I could take my Facebook “data” with me to another Web 2.0 service, but if the friends “contained” within that data aren’t using that service, what’s the point?

Obviously, data portability goes beyond simple lists of friends, but in the context of consumer Web 2.0 services, I think technologists who now consider the addition of “social” features to existing applications to be innovation ironically overlook the fact that data and technology don’t drive the popularity of Web 2.0 services – people do.

Without active, engaged and passionate users who perceive some value in using the Internet as a platform for social interaction, a Web 2.0 service probably isn’t going anywhere, regardless of data portability.

Tim Berners-Lee may think services that aren’t hip to issues of data portability are “boring,” and as much as I respect and admire his accomplishments, Tim Berners-Lee is still a consummate geek. As I see it, from a mainstream standpoint, data portability is about as exciting as herpes. As much as it's attracting attention, the average person just doesn't want it. And yet, just like herpes, you can be sure it's a topic that isn’t going away.

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